What Do You Remember More, Your First Kiss…or Your First Lay?

January 10, 2011

Supposedly, your first kiss is more memorable than your first sexual experience. Scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum has written a book about the research she’s conducted on the subject, in which she determines that “most of us” can recall “90 percent of the details” of that first smooch. This, according to her studies, trumps what we can recall of our first times in the sack, perhaps because those details tend to be harrowing at best.

Via the Daily Mail, Kirshenbaum also points out that men and women have different (generalized) ideals about a kiss. Women think that first lip lock is a means by which to “extricate the significance of a relationship.” (It is, if it’s horrible, in which case the relationship should be considered insignificant.)

Meanwhile, men kiss aggressively, “as they are trying to pass on a ‘testosterone bomb’ to a lover.” (FYI: This may also lead to “insignificant relationships.” And/or chafing.)

Kirshenbaum’s book sounds like an amazing read, if only for the real-talk sentences like this one:

Young women usually get less satisfaction than they hoped from a kiss, although many men do not appear to notice, the book says.

But we would like to cast a shred of dubiousness upon this “remembering your first kiss” theory. Frankly, sometimes something else is more memorable. As one Daily Mail reader comments:

Here at Runnin’ Scared, we’re with Ed in that we do NOT remember our first kiss, which we fear may have happened when we were overwhelmingly underage, but we do remember “our first time,” and we also remember the first time we drank vodka, which was, sadly but truly, by far the most memorable of all three of the events. And we vaguely remember our most recent kiss. We think.